Tindie

If you commit unintentional herbicide more than you’d like, there’s a good chance it’s because you’re watering your plant an inappropriate amount. If this is you, or if you just can’t stand to have something natural in your house without a bit of technology attached, then the Chirp! plant watering alarm may be for you!

As described in its writeup, “You put it into the soil near a plant and it emits a tiny chirp when the soil is dry, reminding you to water the plant.” At this point, you will water the plant — yes to keep it alive, but more to stop the sound. It is, however, programmed not to chirp at night, so it should be less annoying than some other household alarms.

If the design doesn’t work for you, it’s open source, so you can make changes as needed. As is though, it should be easy enough to use for even the worst gardeners. Be sure to check out Catnip Electronics’ page for a slightly different version of this sensor, a couple of other electronics bits, and a black-and-white picture of a computer scientist with a cat’s head!

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In the world of hobbyist electronics most people are accustomed to 3.3V or 5V level logic signals. Step into the world of industrial electronics and they tend to use 24V logic signals. PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) work with 24V I/O but they cost anywhere from several hundred to a couple of thousand euros. The reason they are so expensive is partly due to the fact that they are built to last for years and are very reliable, but basically all they are is a microcontroller with some level shifting circuitry built in.

The VM1AT_R1 Industrial Microcontroller board made by Tutan takes the basic idea behind a PLC and puts it into a nice barebones PCB. On the board you have an ATmega328p and several shift register chips which handle all of the inputs and outputs. The board can be powered from 9-30VDC thanks to the LM2596 DC-DC switch mode power supply module. Since all of the I/O pins are done using shift registers, you get 16 digital inputs and 7 digital outputs that can operate at 24V.

Are you in need of an industrial board to read some sensors and switch some outputs but don’t want to shell out for a PLC?. This board will let you do most things a traditional PLC can do for a fraction of the price.

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If you’ve been perusing hobbyist electronics for any amount of time (and since you’re reading Tindie’s blog, it’s a good guess that you have), you’ve seen projects that use a mint tin as an enclosure. Setting aside any possible conductivity issues, these tins are a nice size for a small and simple project, and can be opened and closed easily for access.

Embracing this concept, the creatively capitalized Azzy’S Electronics Store has a prototyping board cut in just the right shape to fit in these makeshift enclosures. To keep things in place, Azzy recommends using standoffs, either glued to the tin or attached with screws. Though not the first mint tin prototyping board on the market, this one claims to be optimized “for functionality and rapid prototyping.” At $3.75 plus a very reasonable $0.75 shipping charge to the United States, the price looks quite reasonable.

Of course, this isn’t the only board sold by Azzy’s Electronics. In that store you’ll also find many other types and sizes of prototyping boards as well as other similarly-themed electronics goodies for your next project!

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Quadcopters are great fun to fly, even more so if you build it yourself. In this edition of Build It With Tindie, we’ll be looking at some of the options available for those looking build their own small and lightweight multi-rotor.

Parts List:

For a bare bones and lightweight quad-copter the parts needed will look something like this:

• Lightweight Frame
• Coreless DC Motors
• Flight Controller
• Motor Driver
• Propellers
• LiPo Battery

Motors:

Quadcopters, as their name implies, use four motors for flight. There are also hexacopters and octacopters and so on but the most common for hobbyist use is a quadcopter. The main types of motors you’ll see used is either a brushless motor or a coreless DC motor.

Brushless motors provide high acceleration and torque but they weigh more than the coreless DC motors. The coreless motors provide high acceleration but not that much torque, so they are generally used on smaller multi-rotors. If you want to strap a go-pro to your multirotor, go with the brushless motor. If you’re going for a small and lightweight multi-rotor, consider using a coreless DC motor.

Flight Controller:

KISS flight controller – popular with hobbyists

The flight controller uses an IMU(Inertial Measurement Unit) to determine the current orientation of the multi-rotor, it can then control the orientation by driving each of the four motors. Most flight controllers designed for coreless DC motors have transistors built-in to drive the motors. Brushless motor flight controllers normally require an external ESC (Electronic Speed Controller).

Parts Available From Tindie:

ESP8266 Flight Controller:

This flight controller is jam-packed with features. It uses an ESP8266 to allow for control via a WiFi connection. It’s got an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer on-board, all being combined to give a very fast reacting and stable IMU. There is a 4MByte flash chip included which allows you to program the device over the air via the ESP8266 and would also come in handy for flight data logging. Power comes from a 1S 3.7V LiPo battery. A 5V boost converter is included to  power the ESP8266 or an RC radio in the event you don’t want to use the on-board WiFi chip. N-type MOSFets are included on the board for driving the motors. You can easily tweak the flight control program as the board can be programmed via the Arduino IDE, several example programs are provided with the board for you to experiment with.

Frame:

The frame needs to be lightweight and stay in one piece when the inevitable crash happens. This 3d printed carbon fiber composite frame sold by Deadbee Labs is durable enough to withstand even the toughest of punishment. It weighs a measly 10 grams which will really help towards keeping our overall weight as low as possible.

Parts From Other Suppliers:

Parts like the motors, propellers, and the battery will need to be sourced elsewhere. These parts are readily available from Chinese wholesale websites at a fraction of the cost compared to most dedicated quad-copter part supply websites. When moving toward a purchase you should weigh your reliability needs against cost savings.

Parts From Your Parts Bin:

Unless you feel like making your own flight controller board, pretty much every part that goes into a multi-rotor is a special purchase just for it. With the exception of a few jumper wires and some fasteners you’ll keep that parts bin stocked for the next project!

Build It With Tindie Score:

Here’s a breakdown of how much of a quadcopter you can build using Tindie:

• Tindie: 50%  (frame, flight controller)
• Other Suppliers: 50%  (battery, motors, propellers)
• Parts Bin: 0%

Building a quad-copter is at the top of the list of coolest electronics projects a hobbyist can undertake. From aerial photography to racing to freestyle flying, there is a lot of fun things you can do with it. If you really feel up to a challenge, try making it autonomous !

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The InMoov, by French designer Gaël LANGEVIN, is an “open source 3D printed life-size robot”. Reminiscent of the androids seen on the movie I, Robot, this device is a very impressive build. Certainly, however, building something like this on your own would take a very long time.

On the other hand, if you’d like to start on your humanoid robotics journey with something a bit simpler, why not try out a finger first? You could build your own, but an InMoov finger kit is available on Tindie here.

The kit includes the mechanical finger parts to make something that can point or clench, but you’ll have to provide your own servo and control unit. Conveniently, it’s designed to fit an Arduino Uno and a hobby-type servo, so the extra parts shouldn’t be too hard to obtain.

One finger might not sound that interesting, but the motion, as seen below, looks really strange and interesting. Also, Gaël has hooked up an arm band to allow the finger to follow his arm’s motion, so perhaps you can build an army of fingers imitating your every move!

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The TiLDA Mkπ badge from EMF is packed full of cool and useful features. The first thing you’ll notice is the 320×240 LCD display which provides surprisingly sharp images and good visibility in direct sunlight. There is also a joystick, A/B buttons, WiFi (via a cc3100 radio chip), accelerometer, magnetometer, and a buzzer. There was a WS2812B LED included on the board but it was accidentally soldered on upside down. Applying power to it in this position tends to fry it instantly but it’s a nice soldering challenge to de-solder it and put on your own. Several people at the festival did this and gained huge nerd street credit.

Whilst the badge itself is entirely open source, certain things are included that aren’t overtly documented anywhere. The best example of this is the 12 pins broken out on the middle-left of the board. At first glance it might look like some kind of fancy programming connection for initial programming of the badges. It turns out these pins are included with the specific use of controlling quad-copter motors. With the on-board IMU, it is possible to make a quadcopter control board using the badge. It may have been a bit optimistic to think there would be badge-copters flying around at the festival but in the coming weeks somebody is bound to have a crack at it.

Programming the badge is incredibly accessible as it shows up as a mass storage device when plugged into a computer via the on-board micro USB port. All apps are written in Micropython so programming the badge is as simple as editing a python file on a removable drive. All apps written can be submitted to a badge app store where it needs to be approved by a moderator, because you can be certain someone will write a badge bricking app eventually!

If you are interested in checking out projects made with this badge, keep an eye on the #emfcamp hashtag on twitter. So far the badge has been turned into a USB mouse and a terrible oscilloscope.

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Perhaps you’ve been wondering if the scope of Tindie products would include a 3D printer? You can find the answer to that question in the form of the Reprap Wilson II 3D Printer Kit. This kit, provided by Marty Rice’s store, includes everything that you need to build this fused deposition modeling 3D printer.

At just under $500, you can find printer kits for less, but if you want something that features high-quality components as well as good documentation for the build, then this printer is certainly worth a look. All parts are included, and the kit requires no soldering or cutting of rods or beams. Additionally, the controller comes pre-installed with the recommended firmware, so that is one less thing that you’ll have to worry about.

Finally, Rice provides step-by-step video instructions for the build here. This should be helpful both in assembly and when deciding whether or not you want to take on something like this yourself.

The plastic parts can be included with the kit, or you can print them yourself if you have access to another machine. On the other hand, if you only need the plastic parts (perhaps you decided not to print them), they can be purchased separately. That page will also allow you to see these parts in most of the different available colors.

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Electromagnetic Field has come and gone. 1500 makers all assembled in a field in Guildford, England for three days and as you can imagine, it was cool projects galore. Tindie and Hackaday hosted a bring-a-hack event on Friday, there was a great turnout and loads of great projects. Here are some of those projects and other discoveries I made during the EMF weekend.

WS2811 LED Light Staff:

This light staff looks pretty cool when stationary. Start spinning it around and you can see some
POV effects at work displaying crazy patterns. The lights are run using a Teensy with some LiPo batteries stuffed into the handle of the staff. Made by electronic engineer David Hopkis.

Fire Pong:

This Fire Pong installation made by Nottingham hackspace was a huge hit with festival goers. The idea is there are 12 gas solenoid valves lined up in a row, each releasing a spurt of gas one after another to simulate a moving ball of flame. There is a person with a bat standing at each end and you can only swing the bat when the flame ball is within the four actuators closest to you. Any further than that and the ‘ball’ is not in your court so the swing isn’t counted.

With each successful hit of the bat things speed up and it becomes increasingly challenging to time your swing to be in your bit of the court. Each bat has a Wii remote built-in for gyro sensing as well as a vibration motor which provides haptic feedback to simulate hitting a real ball. Before a match you are given a few test swings to get a feel for the bat and where about in the swing it registers a hit. Getting used to the bat and timing your swing makes the game deceptively challenging and very fun to play.

StarPi : Raspberry Pi based Astrophotography

StarPi creator Chris Dick hooked up his telescope eyepiece to a Raspberry Pi camera but quickly ran into the problem of having no idea what he was looking at. The open source astronomy sky map software Stellarium has a plugin for motorized telescopes which solves this problem.

StarPi was born to connect a computer running Stellarium to a telescope equipped with motors and a Raspi. This allows for object tracking and knowing precisely what and where you are looking at. There are commercial solutions available but cost hundreds of dollars, StarPi is a nice and low cost solution to the problem. You can view the full project write-up over on Chris’ Hackaday io page.

Huge thanks to Oxford hackspace for hosting the Tindie/Hackaday brink-a-hack. Check out Hackaday writer and Oxford Hackspace member Jenny Lists write-up of the EMF weekend.

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3D printing allows you to make nearly any sort of shape with equipment that costs, on the consumer level, in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars. What it doesn’t normally do is allow you to make the print in any color that you like. There are certainly multi-extruder options out there for some variation in materials, but if you want true “color independence,” the ColorPod allows one to use a “2D-printer” cartridge to color the extrusion material on demand.

This material comes in the form of a powder instead of a spool of filament, and is poured into a funnel to be mixed by the ColorPod. The ‘Pod attaches to a filament-based printer instead of a traditional extruder head. Included software takes care of putting the correctly colored dots in the right places.

As neat as this is, the ColorPod does take some setup, including printing brackets, so it may not be a good product for 3D-printing novices. That being said, if you’re ready to take your prints to the next level, extruding them in glorious full color has to be something that will turn a few heads!

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When working with a board that involves getting power from solar panels and batteries, even a simple project quickly becomes complicated. Due to the nature of solar panels, their voltage changes over the course of the day. If you want to keep a continuous RF link up and running, the board must be able to work with a wide voltage range and only run on battery power when necessary. The ArduRF1 takes care of all the small details that need tending when working with solar power. This will let you get your project running with minimum hassle.

The maximum supply voltage is a whopping 42V meaning you can take power from a wide range of sources, from automobiles to wind turbines. And the board is designed to handle the varying voltage of a solar panel. A panel spec’d at 12V might put out 18V on a very bright day and 0V at night. The board will keep the RF link running and charge the battery while the sun is out, switchung to battery when solar power drops off.

The RF transceiver used is an RFM69  which has a maximum range of 1.5 miles in open air and on the lowest baud rate setting. Testing of the ArduRF1 showed that 80 hours of battery life is possible on a single charge of a 1500 mAh battery. This was while transmitting a 40 byte message once every 5 seconds. This test did not make use of the low power sleep mode on the ArduRF1. With the addition of solar power, it should be possible to transmit continuously especially factoring in sleep mode.

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